Related papers: Stochastic Multi-Armed Bandits with Limited Contro…
We present differentially private algorithms for the stochastic Multi-Armed Bandit (MAB) problem. This is a problem for applications such as adaptive clinical trials, experiment design, and user-targeted advertising where private…
The multi-armed bandit (MAB) problem is a classical learning task that exemplifies the exploration-exploitation tradeoff. However, standard formulations do not take into account {\em risk}. In online decision making systems, risk is a…
Statistical inference from data generated by multi-armed bandit (MAB) algorithms is challenging due to their adaptive, non-i.i.d. nature. A classical manifestation is that sample averages of arm rewards under bandit sampling may fail to…
We present a provably optimal differentially private algorithm for the stochastic multi-arm bandit problem, as opposed to the private analogue of the UCB-algorithm [Mishra and Thakurta, 2015; Tossou and Dimitrakakis, 2016] which doesn't…
We consider the setup of stochastic multi-armed bandits in the case when reward distributions are piecewise i.i.d. and bounded with unknown changepoints. We focus on the case when changes happen simultaneously on all arms, and in stark…
We characterize a joint CLT of the number of pulls and the sample mean reward of the arms in a stochastic two-armed bandit environment under UCB algorithms. Several implications of this result are in place: (1) a nonstandard CLT of the…
This paper introduces the informational multi-armed bandit (IMAB) model in which at each round, a player chooses an arm, observes a symbol, and receives an unobserved reward in the form of the symbol's self-information. Thus, the expected…
Recent work has considered natural variations of the multi-armed bandit problem, where the reward distribution of each arm is a special function of the time passed since its last pulling. In this direction, a simple (yet widely applicable)…
We study stage-wise conservative linear stochastic bandits: an instance of bandit optimization, which accounts for (unknown) safety constraints that appear in applications such as online advertising and medical trials. At each stage, the…
The multi-armed restless bandit problem is studied in the case where the pay-off distributions are stationary $\varphi$-mixing. This version of the problem provides a more realistic model for most real-world applications, but cannot be…
Lai and Robbins (1985) and Lai (1987) provided efficient parametric solutions to the multi-armed bandit problem, showing that arm allocation via upper confidence bounds (UCB) achieves minimum regret. These bounds are constructed from the…
Multi-armed bandit (MAB) problems serve as a fundamental building block for more complex reinforcement learning algorithms. However, evaluating and comparing MAB algorithms remains challenging due to the lack of standardized conditions and…
In this paper, we consider a risk-averse multi-armed bandit (MAB) problem where the goal is to learn a policy that minimizes the risk of low expected return, as opposed to maximizing the expected return itself, which is the objective in the…
We consider a novel stochastic multi-armed bandit setting, where playing an arm makes it unavailable for a fixed number of time slots thereafter. This models situations where reusing an arm too often is undesirable (e.g. making the same…
Classical multi-armed bandit problems use the expected value of an arm as a metric to evaluate its goodness. However, the expected value is a risk-neutral metric. In many applications like finance, one is interested in balancing the…
We consider stochastic multi-armed bandits where the expected reward is a unimodal function over partially ordered arms. This important class of problems has been recently investigated in (Cope 2009, Yu 2011). The set of arms is either…
We consider stochastic non-stationary linear bandits where the linear parameter connecting contexts to the reward changes over time. Existing algorithms in this setting localize the policy by gradually discarding or down-weighting past…
As an extension of the classical multi-armed bandit problem, multi-fidelity multi-armed bandits (MF-MAB) enable individual arms to be evaluated using diverse feedback sources that vary in both cost and accuracy. Prior stochastic models…
We consider contextual linear bandits over networks, a class of sequential decision-making problems where learning occurs simultaneously across multiple locations and the reward distributions share structural similarities while also…
Multi-armed bandit (MAB) algorithms have achieved significant success in sequential decision-making applications, under the premise that humans perfectly implement the recommended policy. However, existing methods often overlook the crucial…